AN: Sorry for the wait! I've got company and asshats to deal with regularly and it's just taking a ton of time to get the chance to enter the mind-palace. Might be just as long before I can update again, but I wanted to give ya SOMEthing... So here ya go :) Enjoy! And don't kill me...

.~*~.

A couple more days...

It would've been, anyway, if Sam didn't wake up in the middle of the night nearly screaming.

Dean was violently thrown out of his sleep at the horrid sound, and it took mere seconds to realize it was coming from Sam. Dean was up out of his own bed and over to Sam's before he was awake enough to remember where they were. "Sammy!" he grasped onto his brother's arms as Sam's hands were pressing against his own head, eyes screwed shut in obvious pain. "Sam, baby, can you hear me?" he asked, voice shaking as badly as his hand as he repeatedly punched the call button for the nurse.

"Guh..." Sam grunted through panting breaths. "D'n...h-hurts..."

"What happened?" the nurse, Carol was her name, Dean remembered, quickly rushed into the room.

"It's his head. He says it hurts real bad," Dean told her, worriedly. "Can you give him something?"

"Let me get the doctor," she said quickly as she rushed out of the room. That didn't sit well with Dean at all.

He turned back to Sam, placing a hand on his chest as he leaned down. "Gotta breathe, Sammy," he told him. Sam let out a breath in a sob, sucking in another breath and holding it. "It's gonna be okay," he tried to reassure him, placing his other hand on the top of Sam's head, fingers brushing up against Sam's. "Doctor's comin' to check you out, and it'll be okay."

"H'rts bad, De- please...make...make it stop..."

"I know, baby. I'm so sorry," he kissed his hair right beside the bandage where they'd done the biopsy.

Before he even could register it, the room flooded with people. Doctor and nurse staff alike, all ready to move Sam. Dean panicked.

"What's happening?" he asked.

"We need to get Sam into CT asap," the doctor told him. "He may have a complication from the biopsy."

The breath left Dean for a moment and he bent back down to Sam's ear before they could take him away. "Sammy, I love you..." his voice shook.

"De..." Sam's voice started to relax and Dean realized they'd given him a shot of something. "Love you..."

Dean fought tears as he watched them wheel his bed out of the room. He fought them until he was alone, and then he let himself freak the hell out.

Making a Winchester freak out was a pretty big accomplishment in itself. They'd seen a lot in their lifetime. Too much, really. More than a person should be able to handle physically or emotionally. And really, it had been too much. Hell, they'd died. Apparently on several occasions, even. They'd seen and experienced some of the most bizarre crap known and unknown to man. But there was only one thing that could made Dean Winchester freak out. One thing that could turn him from totally collected, and twist him into a pit of helplessness, rendering him unable to process thoughts or have control over his emotional state. And that was Sam. Sam hurting. Sam sick or in pain or bleeding. Sam hurt in a way that Dean could do nothing about.

When Sam was killed by that psycho Jake, Dean had been ready to go with him. He'd been ready to take himself out, just waiting for Bobby to leave him alone so he could do it. Making a deal with a demon wasn't something he was willing to do before then. It was never an option sitting on the back-burner, "just in case". But he got desperate. He got scared. He got terrified. Death didn't necessarily mean he'd be back with his brother. Didn't really mean anything would happen. There was no guarantee. And if he was willing to off himself, he decided he was damn well willing to sell his soul to bring Sam back.

Fact was, Dean couldn't live without Sam. End of story...

Sam got hurt just as much, if not more, than Dean did. More often than not, hospitals were out of the question, and Dean would be the one fixing him up, sewing him back together, nursing him through pain-induced fevers, waking him up to make sure he still knew his name if he had a concussion. Dean fixed Sam, no matter what it was that was broken. No matter how impossible it should've been for a guy who dropped out of high school and only ever stepped foot on college grounds to rid of something supernatural. Or to retrieve his brother...

But this was Sam's brain.

Sam's brain was what set him apart from Dean and their dad. He'd playfully made fun of him for that brain, praised him for it, relied on it and had been saved from it over and over again.

But Dean could not fix it if it was broken.

He had no deals left, as he'd contemplated and concluded before this. He could only leave the one person he loved the most on this planet, the one thing keeping him from losing himself, in the hands of someone else. He didn't even like leaving his brother's stitches up to someone else.

Oh god...why is it so hard to breathe?

"Sir, are you okay?" a woman's voice sounded somewhere beside him.

He couldn't think. There was too much swimming around in his head and it was getting hard to make room for anything else. He shook his head. "They took Sam," he said, not looking at her.

"Yes, Sir, they took him for a CT and we've called Dr. Dunker in. The neurosurgeon that did the biopsy." If he'd been able to pay attention to his surroundings, he'd have seen her cautiously approaching him. "You should lie down," she told him. "I know I'm not your usual nurse, but I know that you and your husband are here being treated for HSE, and I know that he is in good hands with our team."

"Being in good hands doesn't mean he's okay," Dean realized that he was shaking. He jumped when he felt her hand on his arm.

"I'm concerned about how you're breathing right now, Mr. Grovkowski, Can you at least sit down for me?"

"There's nothing wrong with me," he grunted. "I'm getting precautionary treatment, that's all. I'm fine." He grunted again, but this time it was at the sudden pain in his chest.

"Mr. Grovkowski!" she said more sternly, then forced him to the bed to sit. He went without a fight at that point, momentarily distracted by the frightening feeling of how hard his heart was beating. He was vaguely aware of her shouting out for someone to help.

He couldn't breathe. Nausea hit him like a cloud of steam. His vision began to tunnel. He was dying. He was pretty much sure of it.

Funny thing was, that final thought before drifting into unconsciousness was that it was okay. If he was gonna lose Sam, then this? This...was okay...